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Friday, November 1, 2013

The Melody of Secrets

Idgie Says:Jeffrey has a special talent. He takes the most mundane task or event and describes it in such a technicolor manner that you can feel the breeze, smell the clean linen, while also being able to embrace the character's every emotion. This is his third book and he doesn't disappoint. Once again the story practically jumps from the page. I was drawn into Maria's life from page one. Set in Alabama, you not only stay on the edge of your seat as Maria deals with the secrets that have been hidden so long slowly unraveling in front of her in regards to her past in Germany, the camps, her husband's possible SS affiliation and the love she lost at 18 suddenly walking back into her life.... but she also sets herself directly in the middle of a race relations situation. Who better to try to make a change than a woman that watched human beings sent to death camps for the color of their hair?

I read this book in a single sitting, unable to put it down and wait for the next day to find enough time to finish it. It might at first come across as a long lost love story, but it's much more than that.

Jeffrey Stepakoff's The Melody of Secrets is an epic love
story set against the 1960s U.S. space program, when deeply-buried
secrets could threaten not just a marriage, but a country.

Maria was
barely eighteen as WWII was coming to its explosive end. A brilliant
violinist, she tried to comfort herself with the Sibelius Concerto as
American bombs rained down. James Cooper wasn't much older. A roguish
fighter pilot stationed in London, he was shot down during a daring
night raid and sought shelter in Maria’s cottage.

Fifteen
years later, in Huntsville, Alabama, Maria is married to a German
rocket scientist who works for the burgeoning U.S. space program. Her
life in the South is at peace, purposefully distanced from her
past. Everything is as it should be—until James Cooper walks back into
it.

Pulled from the desert airfield where he was testing planes
no sane Air Force pilot would touch, and drinking a bit too much, Cooper
is offered the chance to work for the government, and move himself to
the front of the line for the astronaut program. He soon realizes that
his job is to report not only on the rocket engines but also on the
scientists developing them. Then Cooper learns secrets that could
shatter Maria’s world...

The day "Claire" from Lost mentioned me!

Pat Says:

Pat Conroy just told me that I take a foul art and give it a queenly air, then he kissed my hand.

Decatur Book Festival, 2014

Books that "Stuck"

In no particular order: Bill Bryson and James Herriot....I have re-read anything they write multiple times.We're All DamagedThe End of the World Running ClubHandmaid's Tale Watership DownRiversDesperation RoadBull Mountain The Stand The Poisonwood Bible Black Beauty The Road... read once, will never read again, but it stuck. Lonesome Dove Gone With The Wind....of course Earth Abides A Brave New World

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Idgie

“She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain.” —Louisa May Alcott